The public denunciation by thousands of women and a few men that they had been victims of sexual abuse by their economic bosses raises fundamental issues about the social relations of American capitalism.

The moral offenses are in essence economic and social crimes. Sexual abuse is only one aspect of the social dynamics facilitating the increase in inequality and concentration of wealth, which define the practices and values of the American political and economic system.

Billionaires and mega-millionaires are themselves the products of intense exploitation of tens of millions of isolated and unorganized wage and salaried workers. Capitalist exploitation is based on a rigid hierarchy with its private prerogatives, which enables the oligarchs to demand their feudal privileges, their seigniorial sexual predations.

US capitalism thrives on and requires unlimited power and the capacity to have the public treasury pay for its untrammeled pillage of land, labor, transport systems and technological…

3 thoughts on “Making America Great Through Exploitation, Servitude and Abuse”

And though many names were caught up in the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and the #MeToo Movement is a result of that scandal, what concrete steps were taken to insure that this does not continue to happen? None! And that is what this article was pointing out. It is all fine and good to eventually find your voice and tell your story of sexual exploitation and we all know about worker exploitation at many companies like Walmart and Amazon, but knowing about what is happening and being able to do anything about what’s happening is two different things.

Average rank and file workers really have no clout and have lost any chance of gaining an edge over their employers since workers have given up much of the bargaining power that unions provided when unions were first introduced to companies as a way to give the worker leverage over his boss when necessary. It is still necessary but unions have been forced out and I don’t see them making a comeback, nor is anything else coming down the pike to take the place of unions on behalf of average workers. As bad as it is now, it is just going to get worse.

Yep, all this is true, Shelby. This is the major problem I see with the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements – there’s no effort to connect these abuses with the underlying oppression and exploitation that’s the basic engine of capitalism or to connect these abuses with the everyday exploitation workers experience at work. Even if women should miraculously end sexual harassment, they will still be heavily exploited at work. I suspect the powers that be (CIA-funded foundations and media) are happily promoting the #MeToo movement to prevent workers from unifying and organizing to end workplace oppression.